Hagstrom:
Every year Sports Illustrated hands out a "Sportsman of the Year" award to the athlete or team "whose performance most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement."
It's only late August, but I think someone already has a lock on the award. His name is Andy Sonnanstine, Jae Weong Seo, Casey Fossum, Shawn Camp and Brian Stokes….
More precisely, he is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' pitching staff. Although Kevin McHale was extremely generous to his playing-days alma mater by making the bottom-feeder Celtics an instant playoff contender in the East in exchange for a trash receptacle, Theo Ratliff and a few young, mediocre players, no one and no team has been more altruistic than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
At 48-78, the Devil Rays are further from equilibrium than a teeter-totter with a 400- pound man and an infant on it. In fact, Tampa Bay is so pitiful that they're almost out of the race for second-to-last-place as Pittsburgh has built its lead to six-and-a-half games.
Joe Maddon's squad mainly has its pitching staff to blame. Entering last weekend's series against Oakland, Tampa Bay ranked last in nearly every statistical category: ERA, hits allowed, home runs and saves.
Paralleling its competitive edge in the win-loss column, Tampa Bay's 5.74 ERA is 71 points higher than baseball's second-worst staff, Cincinnati. Its bullpen ERA is 6.24, 80 points worse than Baltimore's.
Even when no one cared to win themselves in baseball's warm-up, spring training, the ever subservient Devil Ray's chose to boost the confidence of the oppositions' hitters and pitchers by losing 13 straight contests.
If those selling points aren't enough to convince you that the D-Rays are the "Sportsmen of the Summer," — heck with 9 last place finishes in 10 years, they could be named "Sportsmen of the Decade" — at least the best team in baseball can be thankful. The Boston Red Sox play Tampa Bay 18 times per year. Through 12 games, the Sox are 9-3.
Tell me what Tampa Bay has done isn't a feat. Give it the recognition it deserves.
Point: Tampa Bay.
Voelkel:
This was not one of the better summers for sports. Between steroids in baseball, gambling in the NBA and a month of August more conducive to making mosquitoes than making birdies out on the links, it was a certifiable downer of a summer.
But amid all this negativity, one athlete stood as a symbol of all that is good and right with sport, chewing up the once-dominant old guard with a performance for the ages.
His name is Joey Chestnut, and he is the Sportsman of the Summer.
Chestnut, for those who may not know, is a competitive eater. Not just any competitive eater, however. Thanks to a trio of record-setting performances this past year, Chestnut is the No. 1 competitive eater in the world, according to the International Federation of Competitive Eating rankings. (Yeah, that actually exists). He started the summer out on a high note, eating 8.6 pounds of fried asparagus at the Asparagus Festival in April. One month later he downed a record 7.05 pounds of chicken wings in 12 minutes.
His signature moment came on Independence Day. In the iconic American city, New York, Chestnut defended American soil by defeating a giant in the competitive eating community, six-time champ Takeru Kobayashi to win the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. In doing so, he downed a record 66 dogs in 12 minutes and captured the imagination of a nation.
The Devil Rays definitely make a worthy case for the honor of Sportsmen of the Summer, but it’s not quite enough. The staff’s case is hurt by the fact the Devil Rays' mascot, Raymond, boasts online that his hot dog per game intake now stands at 14.8 dogs per game. Fifteen hot dogs over a three hour time period is a feat for the average person, but that’s doesn’t hold a candle to Joey C. He eats four times that many in one-twelfth the time.
When you look at it that way, the choice is clear.
Chestnut. Count it!
